How the Mongols helped shape Japanese history
By Ben Churcher
Hidden behind a coastal pine forest on the shores of Hakata Bay near the city of Fukuoka in northern Kyushu is a stone wall. It now only stands a couple of metres high and has the appearance of being recently reconstructed from rounded field stones. The wall is now incomplete, but it once ringed the shore of Hakata Bay and was built to face off a terrifying threat – the fleet of the Mongol Emperor Kublai Khan.
Behind this wall stood Japanese soldiers, or samurai, from fiefdoms from across Kyushu and Honshu. Opposite them, bobbing on the waters, was the Mongol armada captained by Korean admirals, manned by Chinese soldiers, but commanded by Mongol generals. They were there at the behest of their ruler, Kublai Khan, who oversaw the Mongol Empire at its height. Only recently had the Khan achieved his greatest triumph by conquering the Southern Song Dynasty to unite China under his rule. Now that he governed perhaps a hundred million people, the Khan would have seen the addition of Japan to his empire as a foregone conclusion.
The samurai, with little experience of a major foreign engagement, had every reason to be terrified as they stood behind that wall on Hakata Bay.
Not that they would have known it, but the Japanese soldiers standing behind the wall were at a pivotal time in Japanese history as the old imperial period variously dominated by the emperor, changed to the feudal period variously dominated by military leaders, or Shogun.
Ruins of the wall built on Hakata Bay at the time of the attempted Mongol Invasions (photo courtesy of Ben Churcher)
The journey to get to this point began with the arrival in Japan of what is known as the “Yayoi package”, possibly around 300 BCE. This “package” was a set of cultural and material components that came with newcomers from the Korean peninsula who, like the Mongols much later, arrived at northern Kyushu. What the newcomers brought contained the basic elements of Japanese society as we know it, particularly wet rice farming and the Japonic language.
With the common use of iron metallurgy in the Kofun period (300-538 CE), the farming productivity of the land increased, and with it, the population and general prosperity. This encouraged a number of fiefdoms to be established that shared a common culture but were politically distinct.
By the sixth century, power had started to coalesce in the fertile plains around the city of Nara as the Yamato clans exercised authority over neighbouring clans. The Yamato name became synonymous with all of Japan as the Yamato rulers established their control over southern Japan. Working from Chinese models (including the adoption of the Chinese written language), they developed a central administration and an imperial court attended by subordinate clan chieftains.
Yoshinogari, a carefully reconstructed Yayoi village, erected at a Kyushu archaeological site inhabited since at least the fourth century BCE
In the seventh century, under the legendary Prince Shōtoku, Japan gained a feudal constitution based on Confucian ideals of hierarchy and the rule of law, sent ambassadors to the Chinese court, adopted the Chinese calendar, and allowed the new religion of Buddhism that had been present in Japan for some time to be officially embraced.
No sooner had the Yamato emperors gained power than they began to lose it. In the eighth century the Shōen policy was adopted, whereby powerful nobles petitioned the emperor to declare tax-free estates; at first associated with Shinto or Buddhist temples, as time went by the Shōen system was extended to individuals. As these estates grew, they became independent of the civil administrative system and the emperor’s powers declined.
To protect their interests these fiefdoms required guards, police, and soldiers, and the warrior class made steady political gains. The ultimate expression of this was seen in the eighth century with the formation of the office of Shogun – literally, the long-winded title of “Commander-in-Chief of the Expeditionary Force Against the Barbarians” – that came to dominate Japanese politics for centuries to come.
Rising among the melee, the first Shogun proper, Minamoto no Yoritomo of the Kamakura Shogunate (1192), gave the term ‘Shogun’ a new, wider meaning, thanks to his agreement with the young Emperor Go-Toba. He bestowed de facto rule in return for Yoritomo's military protection. Technically, the emperor was above the Shogun, but in practice it was the reverse, as whoever had control of the army also controlled the state. From this point, the Shoguns would rule for seven centuries, until the Meiji Restoration of 1868 CE.
The Daibutsu or Great Buddha of Kamakura, cast from bronze in the thirteenth century and the most iconic landmark of this town associated with the early Shogunate
A major test of the Kamakura Shogunate came in 1274 and 1281 when facing the Mongol invasions, an event that both defined the limit of Mongol expansion and became a nation-defining moment in the history of Japan.
The first invasion in 1274 was, from the perspective of the Mongols, an expeditionary force. Setting off from Korea, the invasion force consisted of around 30,000 troops and it captured the islands of Tsushima and Iki on its way to Kyushu. The Mongol forces landed on 19 November and immediately engaged the smaller force of Japanese organised to resist the landing.
This was a clash of worlds. On the Mongol side were people experienced with bringing the mighty cities of the world to heel, such as Kaifeng and Hangzhou, both of which had populations of over a million, the great Silk Road city of Merv, and even the ancient citadels of Baghdad and Damascus. As these troops landed at Hakata Bay, they advanced in formation, hurling exploding iron bombs, or hand grenades, in front of them: the first documented military use of gunpowder outside China. On the Japanese side the samurai expected to fight as they knew: calling out the name of someone in the enemy ranks and challenging them to single combat. The Mongols took no notice of such conventions and as the Mongol History of the Yuan records, “slaughtered the enemy in countless numbers”.
A votive tablet (“ema”) showing two samurai with a defeated Mongol on the ground, from Komoda Shrine on Tsushima Island
Fearing that their troops would get disoriented during the night, however, the Mongols failed to follow up their advantage and withdrew to their ships. At their moorings before Hakata Bay, the fleet was devastated by a tropical typhoon and 200 ships were lost. The Japanese lost no time in naming the typhoon a kamikaze or ‘divine wind’.
Following the 1274 attempt, the Japanese were sure the Mongols would return and quickly set about fortifying Hakata Bay, including building the stone defensive wall that still partially stands today.
In 1281, as feared, a larger, better equipped Mongol invasion force arrived, again at Hakata Bay. At first, some Mongol ships came ashore but were unable to make it past the defensive wall and were driven off by volleys of arrows.
Regrouping off-shore and being strengthened by reinforcements, the Mongols attacked again, and after breaching the wall, spent two weeks of fighting across the hinterland of Hakata Bay. However, the Mongols never established a bridgehead and the command and control components of the force remained on board ships moored off the coast.
While the Japanese bravely sent small fire boats against the armada, they had little impact, and the direness of the Japanese situation is summed up by the account of the Japanese Emperor travelling to the shrine of the Sun-Goddess and imploring the deity that the country be saved in return for his own life.
Detail from an atmospheric scroll (1847, Tokyo National Museum) by Kikuchi Yōsao, showing the Mongol fleet lashed by a typhoon
On 15 August a great typhoon again came to the aid of the Japanese. Much stronger than the 1274 typhoon, this massive storm ripped through the Mongol fleet. The invading forces suffered devastating causalities and at least half of the Mongol warriors drowned. Any Mongol soldiers that managed to reach land either starved, due to lost provisions, or were killed by Japanese infantry and samurai warriors. With such significant losses, the Mongols were forced to abandon their plans of invading Japan, saving it from foreign conquest. As only a small fraction of Khan’s original armed forces returned from the expedition, this has been recorded as one of history’s most disastrous naval invasions.
The kamikaze had saved Japan again – and somehow the emperor got out of his promise to the Sun-Goddess and managed to reign for another six years.
In the aftermath of the Mongol invasions, because the Kamakura Shogunate had no captured land to distribute to the nobles who had participated in the battle, its authority declined. In China, there was a growing recognition that the Japanese were brave and violent, and the invasion of Japan was futile. During the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), the invasion of Japan was discussed three times, but it was never carried out because of the previous failed invasion.
Militarily, the invasions cemented the role of the Shogunate in preparing Japan for a third invasion that never came. Military equipment was upgraded, coastal forts constructed, and the military ethos of Japanese culture became embedded. Even the early seventeenth-century policy of sakoku (or ‘closed country’) that cut Japan off from the rest of the world was seen as a way of forestalling threats, such as that experienced in the Mongol period.
This sweep of history can be felt when you stand at the defensive wall on Hakata Bay.
Before the time of the wall is the emergence of the Japanese nation state and the rise of the Shogun. After the time of the wall is the Feudal Period, so well known to us with its warring Shoguns, impressive castles, and its refined cultural accoutrements. It really is as if those stones can speak, once as a witness to one of the world’s defining events, but also about how the kamikaze allowed Japan to develop its own unique culture that is so admired when we visit Japan today.
A gingko tree in the grounds of Kushida Shrine, central Fukuoka, preserves commemorative tablets from the time of the Mongol Invasions